Chapter 1 #2
But the lieutenant’s behavior was so appallingly brash that her jaw dropped.
She exchanged a glance with the orderly, and his sheepish expression only furthered her determination to challenge the lieutenant.
“Just a moment.” Ginger set her hands on her hips.
“I’m treating a patient whose injuries can’t wait. I’ve already prepared him for surgery.”
The lieutenant scowled and raked dirty fingernails against his temple. “Well—this private here can’t wait either.”
The operating theater felt crowded, the air thick.
Ginger scrutinized the injured man. His uniform shirt was open at the collar, and he was missing a shoe.
As she stepped closer, the pungent stink of urine rose from his clothes.
They had covered a wound on his neck with a rag.
“What happened to him?” From the bruising on his face, she imagined he’d been in a fight.
“He tried to shoot himself. Get out of what was coming to him.” His lips held a twist of contempt as they focused on the injured man’s face. “We had to wrestle the pistol away from him.”
The nature of this unfortunate injured man’s situation became clearer. “A deserter?”
“Aye. Now, patch him up. We’ll want him back to health so he can get the punishment he deserves.”
Squaring her shoulders, Ginger gave him a look of disbelief.
“You want me to ‘patch him up’ so you can execute him later?” The Australian soldier she’d been preparing for surgery mumbled.
He couldn’t afford this waste of time. “My good sense and my ethics prevent me from participating in your sense of justice, sir.”
Ducking his chin, the lieutenant reddened.
“You won’t treat him? That doesn’t conflict with your ‘ethics’?
” He loomed over her. “You think you can meddle because you’re a lady doctor, but you can’t.
We stopped this train for this traitor here”—he pointed a finger at the deserter—“to get treatment as soon as possible. And this train will sit here until he does. I have my orders. Now do it. We’ll be right here. ”
Arguing with him would be useless and only cost her precious time.
The irony of it all was that if she were a doctor, her rank equivalent would be to a captain—above this man.
Not that the RAMC had done female physicians the courtesy of bestowing them a true rank.
They faced even more trouble than the nurses did.
The lieutenant would have to go. Then she could do whatever needed to be done.
At last, she nodded stiffly. “But you can’t stay in the operating theater. You can stand guard outside if you wish. You’re filthy and could expose this other patient to infection.” Would he listen? She’d hedged her only chance on doing this her way on the cooperation of a disobliging man.
The lieutenant scanned her face with wary eyes. Sucking in a breath through his teeth, he left, accompanied by his men.
They left a vacuum of stale air. Ginger glanced at the orderly and motioned toward the deserter. “Give that man a shot of morphine.” Her voice was low, her nerves high. How much time did she have before the lieutenant checked in?
She returned to the Australian. Putting her fingers to his wrist, she felt for his pulse, which was faint. “We need to hurry with the amputation.”
The orderly leaned over the deserter, syringe in hand. “And this one?”
“Let’s make him as comfortable as we can for now. Unbind his hands, to start.” Ginger lifted her head as the door opened once more. The other nurse had returned with the guillotine on a cart.
The nurse gaped at the deserter. “And this new one?” She wrung her hands. “This is the oddest stop, wouldn’t you say? Two patients for surgery all at once?”
“We’ll carry on as best we can. The amputation first. You can disrobe the new one. Then compress his wound.” Ginger swept the stray strands of her flame-colored hair behind her head into a tight knot as the nurse moved toward the equipment.
“Do you need sterile gloves?” The nurse looked at Ginger, her face pale.
Ginger bit her lip. “Do you have any that will fit me?”
The nurse shook her head.
“Then, no. They’ll only get in the way.” The rubber was too thick and cumbersome if she used gloves meant for a man. She’d be more accurate with her fingers.
She went to the washbasin and scrubbed her hands with soap before sterilizing them.
The barren wall of the train, whitewashed after the British Army had commandeered it from passenger service in Egypt, reminded her of how many people it took to help the troops.
She’d worked in tents, in hospital ships, on islands, in hospitals, in former hotels, and under the light of the moon with no cover at all.
“This soldier has a chest wound,” the nurse said, peeling back the rag from the deserter’s injury.
“Compression. Quickly, Sister.”
A chest wound. In a blink, her mind was back in the desert, with Noah struggling to breathe as she sought to keep his lung from collapsing. And, nearby, the bodies of her father and brother …
But she couldn’t let her mind wander there.
They worked at a brisk pace, the urgency of the procedure weighing equally heavily in Ginger’s mind as the thought of that lieutenant stalking outside the room.
If he came in and saw her neglecting the deserter, would he make a scene?
She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by him.
The poor Australian brakeman wouldn’t even be in this situation if it hadn’t been for the train stopping.
The orderly worked as her assistant as she tended to the wound above the laceration first. She’d need to clean and cauterize the wound, to staunch the bleeding, then cut the flap of skin for the stump. The guillotine would be last.
When she’d trained as a nurse, she’d never expected to do work like this. Noble thoughts of tending to soldiers had included visions of holding hands, wiping brows, and spooning soup to lightly wounded men in proper hospitals.
How different it had all turned out to be.
The wounds had been macabre and the tactics of warfare, horrific. When the nurses had first arrived at the “hospitals” in Egypt, they’d found dirty buildings unfit to sleep in, let alone treat patients. They’d had to start by scrubbing floors.
And the tropical diseases—brought about by flies, heat, mosquitoes, lice—she’d never even considered those. She’d had malaria once. Seen orderlies and nurses die of typhus. The destruction had been immeasurable and unforgettable.
She’d learned techniques for wound irrigation the RAMC had considered too complex for them at the start of the war. Those hesitations by the brass had vanished when nurses became a necessity.
And though she didn’t want to admit it to herself, part of her hesitation in applying for medical school lay in all the awfulness she’d experienced. She was exhausted—and not just physically.
Before this, she’d scoffed at the idea of being destined for marriage and motherhood. Now, that sounded like a wonderful future. She’d had her fill of war.
“Sister …” The other nurse caught her attention. “His pulse is slowing.”
Before Ginger could give the nurse any further direction, the door to the operating theater pushed open once more. The lieutenant marched inside. “Well?”
Ginger felt all the eyes of the operating theater on her. The nurse didn’t know about the lieutenant’s orders, but the orderly did. He busied himself with cleaning the instruments Ginger had set to the side, his head down.
The lieutenant focused on her work with the amputee. His eyes swiveled toward the deserter. Then, his hands clenched, a vein throbbing in his neck. “You disobeyed me?”
Ginger focused on her work, heat rising to her cheeks. Steady hands, now. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Lieutenant. I’m in the middle of a critical surgery, and you’re interrupting.” Her voice sounded calmer than she felt.
“He’s fading, Sister,” the other nurse said.
“Did you hear? The private is dying! Do something, you useless baggage!” The lieutenant stepped toward the deserter, his hands flailing helplessly.
She could only save one man. Ginger gritted her teeth. And it wouldn’t be the one the army intended to shoot. The soldier had been through enough. Deserters didn’t deserve the death sentence they received. But as she was in no position to change that, she could do this.
Ginger didn’t respond, but her heart pounded. The lieutenant’s presence made her fingers feel more slippery as she held a suturing needle in her fingertips and his body quivered with fury.
The other nurse no longer held the deserter’s wound under compression. Her face was grave. “This one didn’t survive.”
“You bloody woman!” A stream of curses followed, and the lieutenant came toward her.
The orderly stepped between them, keeping the lieutenant away.
The lieutenant shoved a small table set up with equipment, metal clanging. “Do you have any idea what I went through to catch that man? Or what his desertion cost my men?”
The scent of burned flesh filled the space as Ginger began the cauterization. “Lieutenant, I already had a patient. One who didn’t deserve to die at your whims.”
The lieutenant backed away. He studied her, his gaze unnerving.
When she’d finished with the amputation, she directed the other nurse to bandage the wound, then turned her attention to the deserter.
Ginger didn’t want to feel relief, but it came in a slow trickle through her chest. His jaw was slack, the scruff of a few day’s growth on his face. Bruises hid his youth. He couldn’t be too old—in his young twenties, at most.
She prayed the morphine had helped ease his suffering. The bindings that had held him had torn his wrists. He must have struggled to raise the gun toward himself. He’d probably missed his intended target and given himself a much more painful death.
And to think they’d wanted her to prolong his torment. She covered him with a bedsheet to give him some dignity.
“Satisfied with your dereliction of duty?” The lieutenant’s eyes blazed.
Ginger folded her hands in front of her apron. “There was nothing we could do for him.” She gripped her fingers even more tightly.
The lieutenant’s face deepened to a dark flush of scarlet, his lips puckering under his thin moustache. He stepped toward the deceased soldier. The other nurse gave Ginger a questioning look. Ginger shook her head slightly, hoping she would understand not to speak up.
“Women doctors aren’t worth their weight in spit,” the lieutenant said as he started toward the doorway, and Ginger relaxed.
“How dare you?” The nurse stamped her foot with indignation. “To begin with, this nurse is one our finest. And there was little to be done when we had two emergencies at once.”
Despite the nurse’s desire to defend her, Ginger felt a trill of alarm go through her. The lieutenant had been about to leave, which Ginger would have welcomed. She lifted her hand to prevent her from speaking further. “Not to worry, Sister. Emotions are always high when a soldier perishes.”
The lieutenant turned back, his eyes narrowing at the Australian, who slumbered after his surgery. He looked back toward Ginger. “You’re not even a doctor?”
Ginger lifted her chin. Damn it. She set her lips to a line.
With a sneer, the lieutenant pulled a notebook and pencil from his pocket. “I want your name, the hospital where you’re posted, and the name of your superior,” he said to Ginger.
Ginger repressed a sigh, then gave him the information. Just what I need. The train ride back home was, in theory, supposed to be a respite of relaxation.
The lieutenant stared at her name on the notebook, then gave her a menacing look. “There will be consequences for you soon, Sister Whitman. Mark my words.”
Then he left, slamming the door behind him.